Runway incursions are a significant hazard for aircraft taxiing on airfields. In low visibility conditions, runway incursions can significantly increase the risk of collisions between arriving and departing aircraft. To reduce the risk of incursions, low visibility taxi plans have been developed and are employed when takeoff and landing operations have less than a specified runway distance available. Stop bars have been installed at runway intersections to further reduce the chance of incursions. Additionally, taxiway centerline lights, runway edge lights and other geographic position markers have been installed on airfields to provide visual location queues to aircraft pilots. While such approaches are economical to implement, they rely heavily on pilot skill to be effective and do not provide automated updates of changing aircraft location information to air traffic control personnel.
Other systems, such as ground radar systems or systems using global positioning system (GPS) receivers, are capable of transmitting aircraft location information to air traffic control personnel. However, while these systems are capable of indicating the location of an object, the object is not identified. Thus, while air traffic control personnel are aware of the location of the object on the airfield, they have no indication as to whether the object is an airplane or a ground support vehicle, let alone tail number or flight number information if the object is an aircraft. Furthermore, these systems can be costly to implement and often do not integrate easily with existing airfield runway control systems.